Food For Thought

The Sunday before last, I was pleasantly surprised to walk into Eliot dining hall and find an elegant brunch spread, complete with fine meats and cheeses, Boston cream pies, and sumptuous entrées. The tables were draped with white table-cloths, and the parents of juniors filled the tables of the stately hall. But the next night, I was back to sticking my fork into boiled chicken prying what little meat there was off the bone. The salad bar was once again my best friend.

My experience this week demonstrates the golden rule of Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS): if the food is good one day, it will be horrible the next. This is particularly apparent when HUDS goes out of its way to make unusually good food—like on Junior Parents Weekend.

HUDS’ main mission is to provide food for all Harvard College students so that we don’t have to go elsewhere to buy something decent to eat. When people argue that HUDS is insufficient—when they call for longer dining hall hours for instance—they are also making the case that HUDS is not fulfilling this role.

This same argument mandates that HUDS should provide some basic standard of quality. There is no reason why food quality has to be a zero sum game. I shouldn’t have to go to Pinocchio’s to get a cheese steak because the HUDS food was so repulsive that I felt it was worth a splurge. By improving the lowest common denominator, HUDS would be fulfilling their mission better than they would by improving the best few meals of the year.

As I have alluded to earlier, these worst meals often come after HUDS makes some special effort. Whether for a parents weekend, a faculty dinner, or a themed meal, these days with particularly scrumptious fare usually mean bad food for the next few days. And I have pseudo-scientific proof: on Monday and Tuesday immediately following Junior Parents Weekend, the grille, pasta station, and salad bar in my house were unusually packed, and it seemed everyone in the servery was complaining about the quality of the food.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate it when HUDS goes all out. Themed meals are often a fun respite from the standard menu rotation, and for Junior Parents Weekend, I even got the grapes that my blockmates and I had asked for on every HUDS survey we’ve taken.

But fixing bad meals is more important than holding special meals, since doing so will cause students to spend less money outside the dining halls. Besides, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, so missing some additional delicacy won’t be as noticeable or alarming as food that is recurrently borderline-edible. But HUDS needn’t axe these meals entirely; besides making a conscious effort after special meals, a good first step would be to follow such meals with menu items that are hard to screw up, like some simple type of grilled chicken breast.

It’s a shame that we won’t be getting longer dining hall hours this year. But HUDS can make it up to us by proving the golden rule of HUDS is not a rule at all.

Adam M. Guren ’08, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is an economics concentrator in Eliot House.